These young players based in New York boast a formidable range of accomplishments: perfect chording, beautifully matched tone, precise technical command and, as a group, a natural ability to shape the music elegantly and sensitively. Wolf’s Italian Serenade has an admirable lightness, plus a wholly appropriate sense of fun. The Grieg is characterised by strong rhythms, energy and clear textures, bringing out all the harmonic coloration. What is less emphasised is the work’s dark side, the sense of a threatening environment behind the human drama. The Vertavo Quartet, recorded in 1998, lack something of the Amphion’s easy élan, especially in the finale’s Saltarello, but they do project the gloomy episodes more convincingly as well as finding an authentic folk style for the third movement’s Trio section and, crucially, providing an appropriate level of intensity for the major-key return of the motto theme in the final coda, where the Amphion fail to rise to the occasion.

The Janáček similarly offers vivid contrasts of colour and texture, the lyrical phrases beautifully turned, and well thought-out tempo relationships. But here, too, I felt something was missing. Where the Amphion value textural clarity, the Pavel Haas Quartet, producing a denser, more intense sound, give their performance a compelling feeling of continuity. Especially in the finale, with so many apparently disjointed ideas, the more laid-back Amphion performance cannot match the Czech quartet’s sense of triumphant resolution. For all that, this is an outstanding group from whom I’m sure we will hear a great deal in the future.